“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”

“And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.”

“. . . The senses reign, and reason now is dead;from one pleasing desire comes another.Virtue, honor, beauty, gracious bearing,sweet words have caught me in her lovely branchesin which my heart is tenderly entangled.In thirteen twenty-seven, and preciselyat the first hour of the sixth of AprilI entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out.”

“I ate in the morning what I would digest in the evening; I swallowed as a boy what I would ruminate upon as an older man. I have thoroughly absorbed these writings, implanting them not only in my memory but in my marrow. (Quoted by Josh Foer in Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)”

“Yet have I oft been beaten in the field, And sometimes hurt," said I, "but scorn'd to yield." He smiled and said: "Alas! thou dost not see, My son, how great a flame's prepared for thee.”

“She closed her eyes; and in the sweet slumber lyingher spirit tiptoed from its lodging place.It's folly to shrink in fear, if this is dying;for death looked lovely in her face.”

“Neither exhortations to virtue nor the argument of approaching death should divert us from literature; for in a good mind it excites the love of virtue, and dissipates, or at least diminishes, the fear of death.”